Book Review: The Augustana Story: Shaping Lutheran Identity in North America by Maria Erling and Mark Granquist

44
Book Reviews
Erling, Maria, and Mark Granquist. The Augustana Story: Shaping
Lutheran Identity in North America. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg
Fortress, 2008. Illustrated, indexed. 390 pp. ISBN: 0806680253.
$29.00.
This presentation of The Augustana Story, up to Augustana’s be-coming
part of the Lutheran Church in America in 1962, was com-missioned
by the Augustana Heritage Association. The authors, Maria
Erling and Mark Granquist, have provided a comprehensive and
well-written account of the evolution of a fledgling immigrant “synod”
into a church with a national reach, and eventually into a part of a
coming together of Lutherans from many different immigrant back-grounds.
They have also, in an admirable way, provided an account
that honors the “Augustana heritage” by showing how Augustana,
on the basis of its Lutheran roots in Sweden and its increasing inter-action
and cooperation with American fellow Lutherans, served a
steady stream of Swedish immigrants. Augustana helped them form a
bridging Swedish-American community and facilitated their transi-tion
into, and participation in, American society. Like the story of
America itself during this period, the Augustana story is an account
of success and progress as well as of trials, tribulations, and a good
deal of controversy.
The Augustana Story takes the reader from the Swedish begin-nings,
shaped by such well-known Augustana founding fathers as Lars
Paul Esbjörn, Erland Carlsson, Tufve Nilsson Hasselquist, and Eric
Norelius, and by the Awakening that had begun to challenge the
established church in Sweden, through the creation of a separate
Swedish-American Lutheran identity and a sometimes complicated
relationship with the Church of Sweden, to increasing interaction
and eventually closer and closer collaboration with other Lutheran
churches in the United States. The authors show how what began as
a strictly personal relationship among ministers, with a strong empha-sis
on personal piety, evolved into a more and more complex organi-
45
zation, with an administrative hierarchy and the pressure to take
stands, as an organization, on a variety of issues that faced American
society.
The authors flavor their description and analysis of the growth of
Augustana, and of the time of Swedish mass immigration, which was
both its opportunity and its challenge, with portraits of many of its
leaders. Behind the seemingly quiet, pious, and—especially in the
early years—certainly stern surfaces of some of these leaders, they
reveal, through publications and official documents as well as per-sonal
letters, both soaring idealism and grand visions, unselfish devo-tion
to the church and the welfare of its people, enormous energy
and determination and fiery combativeness, personal ambition, fear
of change, a yearning for orthodoxy, bureaucratic wrangling, and
even deviousness. The Augustana Story is an account of how men,
and increasingly women, devoted themselves to a cause that was the
driving force in their lives.
In spite of considerable internal strife, the Swedish-American
Lutheran community did not experience the kind of organizational
splits on doctrinal and behavioral grounds that occurred in other
ethnically based Lutheran communities. But this does not mean that
there were not, as the authors point out, “painful splits in congrega-tions.”
But since “most of the departing groups did not insist on
retaining the Lutheran confessional subscription that Lutherans in-sisted
upon . . . congregational disagreement generated Swedish Meth-odist,
Episcopal, Baptist, and Mission Covenant churches, instead of
rival Lutheran synods.”
It is noteworthy that it has been estimated that only about 15
percent of all Swedish Americans actually belonged to the synod in
the early twentieth century. After all, it certainly appears that
Augustana played a dominant role in the formation of a Swedish
America and, as Dag Blanck has shown in his Becoming Swedish-
American: The Construction of an Ethnic Identity in the Augustana Synod,
1860-1917, in the actual development of a “Swedish American.” It
has been argued, in my opinion justifiably, that Augustana’s sphere of
influence was considerably larger than what the 15 percent figure
may suggest. By comparison, only about 6 percent belonged to the
other Swedish ethnic denominations; if that percentage is divided
46
among the half-dozen other Swedish-American religious entities,
Augustana, of course, looms quite large. And it looms large also vis-à-
vis nonreligious organizations, which, important as the lodges, cul-tural
and historical societies, temperance organizations, Salvation Army
chapters, labor unions, etc., were small by comparison.
To an extent not at all matched by other organizations, Augustana
had a rich outreach, not only through its many congregations spread
across major portions of the nation, but also through its educational
and charitable institutions, its publishing activities, its mission and
youth organizations, and its musical and artistic activities. The au-thors
describe, and document in extensive footnotes, the develop-ment
of such activities within Augustana.
The building of Augustana was aided in major ways by the synod’s
publications, including a remarkable variety of periodicals and ex-tensive
book publishing. As Augustana spread out across the nation,
publications such as Hemlandet, Augustana, and the Lutheran Com-panion
became very important in broad-based communication and
in holding the synod together. The lively, at times quite heated,
internal debate about the directions in which the synod ought to
move reached and engaged the membership through these publica-tions.
Many Augustana publications also served to define and per-petuate
a Swedish heritage among large numbers of Swedish Ameri-cans,
for example, through calendars such as Korsbaneret (The ban-ner
of the Cross).
One of the defining issues that Augustana had to deal with was
that of its Swedish heritage, real or constructed, as opposed to be-coming
more American. The language question, which wracked the
synod, especially during the early years of the twentieth century, was
the most explicit manifestation of this struggle. It set the immigrant
generation and those who wanted to hold onto a narrower ethnic
identity and definition of Lutheranism, against the generations born
in America and those who were more open to collaboration with
other ethnic groups and other Lutherans, and to full participation in
American society.
In its modern manifestation, this issue can perhaps be said to
take the form of a search for, and an assertion of, a unique “Augustana
ethos” and unique “Augustana legacies” within the context of, first,
47
the Lutheran Church in America and, most recently, the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America. The Augustana Heritage Association,
which commissioned this history, was itself, it appears, an outgrowth
of this urge for self-definition. I was party to some of the early discus-sions
of this history project in the association, and I am pleased to
acknowledge that Maria Erling and Mark Granquist have fulfilled
their mission with flying colors. Even if it may be difficult to state
exactly what this “Augustana ethos” is, The Augustana Story does
convey the sense that there existed a bond among the leaders and
the people of Augustana, a bond of mutual friendship and respect,
that helped move the church forward and bridged many potential
ruptures in the body ecclesiastical. The Augustana legacies in the
form of the surviving colleges and a special emphasis on youth work
give some further substance to a unique Augustana heritage.
The relationship to Sweden and the Church of Sweden entailed
a number of complications. For example, when the charismatic Arch-bishop
Nathan Söderblom, who became a world leader in the ecu-menical
movement, visited America, his visit and influence were
strongly resisted by some in the Augustana community. The same
can be said for participation in Augustana events by representatives
of the Church of Sweden in ways that might suggest invoking apos-tolic
succession.
I spent an interesting afternoon with Dr. Conrad Bergendoff a
few years ago, when he must have been in his late nineties. He, of
course, figures prominently in The Augustana Story. When I arrived,
he interrupted his listening to radio coverage of a North Park-
Augustana football game and began reminiscing. Two topics stand
out in my memory from that afternoon, apart from the fact that this
great scholar was actually listening to radio coverage of a college
football game. Maybe the game brought back to him some memories
of the intellectual sparring between Augustana and the Mission Cov-enant?
Anyway, the two topics that most fascinated me were his
working as Archbishop Söderblom’s assistant, as I understood it, around
the time of the Stockholm Conference on Work and Life in 1925,
and the separation of the Augustana Seminary from Augustana Col-lege
in 1948. Dr. Bergendoff’s time in Sweden, working with the
Archbishop, seemed to have been a highly stimulating experience
48
for the young American theologian, including both entering deeply
into the world of scholarship and experiencing ecumenism in a world-wide
perspective. The separation of the seminary and the college, on
the other hand, seemed to have been a bitter experience, the pain of
which had not quite dissipated even after all these years and after a
highly successful life as a scholar, college president, and church leader.
The Augustana Story provides a detailed account of the underlying
controversy between conservatives and progressives in the church.
Controversy was not at all rare in Augustana far beyond the issue
of its ethnic heritage and ecumenism. It was, for example, engen-dered
by some of the outreach activities and organizations and their
roles within the church. There was conflict concerning the academic
standards of the seminary, and its orthodoxy, which pitted liberals in
the church against conservatives. Questions arose about the kind of
college education to be provided by the church’s colleges. There was
conflict concerning whether women should have a vote within the
congregations, and whether they should be allowed to serve as del-egates
to the synod’s conventions. The Women’s Missionary Society
became a challenge to the leadership of the church, as its founder,
the formidable Emmy Evald, daughter of Erland Carlsson, emerged as
a powerful voice within the church. She certainly must have under-mined
any notion of what some regarded as “the ideal pious woman;”
she even testified in the U.S. Congress on the issue of women’s
suffrage. Youth organizations were seen by some as presenting poten-tial
competition with the congregations, and as potential hotbeds for
the kind of worldliness that was fiercely resisted by those who be-lieved
in “code morality,” objecting to all kinds of personal conduct.
But over time these activities and organizations became very success-ful,
and their impact was great; Augustana’s overall impact was in
many ways shaped by them.
It is difficult to think of any major issue facing American society
between 1850 and 1962 that did not raise its head within Augustana:
slavery, the status of women, temperance, capitalism and the labor
movement, militarism and pacifism, communism, and, with special
fury, ecumenism. In many ways, the debate—sometimes ferocious
and quite personal—reflects the points of view and the stands found
in the broader society of the United States. Although Augustana’s
49
leaders seem to have tried to keep such issues from derailing the
activities that they considered central to the life of the church, the
synodical meetings sometimes featured major battles between more
conservative and more liberal factions. The authors have enriched
their presentation with excerpts from, and references to, personal
correspondence, which even more than the official reports captures
the vehemence with which the battles over these very important
issues were fought within Augustana.
The Augustana Story includes a fascinating section—one of a
number of special vignettes spicing the account—on the Swedish-
American artist Birger Sandzén, and on the interest in the arts of his
friend Fritiof Fryxell, the geologist who laid the foundation for the
solid reputation of Augustana College in geology. They are both—as
are many more who appear in the book—laypersons of impressive
intellect and ability who had an impact far beyond the church within
whose institutions they chose to work. It is, of course, also part of the
picture that they ended up in conflict with some of the more conser-vative
elements within Augustana.
With reference to Fryxell, it is worth noting how early—actually
going back to Esbjörn’s teaching of natural science to seminarians in
Springfield in 1857—Augustana schools began teaching geology and
evolution, in contrast to other Lutheran colleges. That the church
did not find any conclusive solution to the issue of evolution, and
science in general, as a challenge to deism and to any notion of the
irrefutability of the Bible, is hardly surprising, given the persistence of
the issue in American society.
As I read the Augustana Story, it struck me that this volume is
not only a solid work of history, but also a corrective and a reminder.
On the one hand, it can serve as a corrective to whatever filiopietistic
tendencies the reader may still find within him- or herself. Our fore-bears
were no saints just marching forward piously in constant peace
and harmony; they were strong-minded, combative, and argumenta-tive
men and women, even as they were driven by idealistic goals.
On the other hand, it can remind the reader that the founding
fathers (and eventually mothers) of Augustana wrestled with many of
the issues we face today and, in spite of much conflict, they found
ways of dealing with them within what remained an intact network of
50
friendship and respect.
We owe Maria Erling and Mark Granquist a debt of gratitude
and appreciation for writing a history of important aspects of our past
and making clear that it is relevant today. That, to me, is a fine way
of honoring the Augustana heritage.
NILS HASSELMO
TUCSON, ARIZONA
Blomqvist, Birgitta, and Jerry Lundgren, Swede Bend, Iowa: 1849 to
1885, The Early Years. Privately published, 2009. Softcover, 153 pp.,
photos, map, chart. Available for $15 plus $5 postage from Swedish
Foundation of Iowa’s Swede Bend Settlement, c/o Swedish Immi-grant
Museum, P.O. Box 132, Stratford, IA 50239.
The Swede Bend settlement was one of the earliest Swedish
settlements in Iowa, dating from 1849. It sprang from the first two
such settlements, New Sweden (1845) and Swede Point (now Madrid)
(1846). In fact, the founders of Swede Bend originally arrived at
Swede Point in central Iowa’s Boone County in October of 1849
after an arduous journey, and then pushed on another thirty or so
miles north to a site where land was more readily available. This
sequence of events was described in my 1998 article in the Quarterly
entitled “America Letters and Iowa’s First Swedish Settlements” (SAHQ
43:3 [October 1998], 169-80).
Swede Bend took its name from a great bend in the Des Moines
River, the same river that flowed south to pass the Swede Point
settlement. Rather than a single location, Swede Bend was always
considered a much broader settlement region of north-central Iowa
that included modern-day Stratford, Dayton, Harcourt, and Gowrie
and was home to many concentrations of Swedish immigrants and
their families, as well as rural areas where Swedish immigrants devel-oped
farms from prairies and wooded bottomlands alike.
The Swede Bend settlement played important roles in the history
of Swedish America, including religious and church history. The
Stratford Evangelical Lutheran Church, for example, was formed by

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All rights held by the Swedish-American Historical Society. No part of this publication, except in the case of brief quotations, may be reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the editor and, where appropriate, the original author(s).

44
Book Reviews
Erling, Maria, and Mark Granquist. The Augustana Story: Shaping
Lutheran Identity in North America. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg
Fortress, 2008. Illustrated, indexed. 390 pp. ISBN: 0806680253.
$29.00.
This presentation of The Augustana Story, up to Augustana’s be-coming
part of the Lutheran Church in America in 1962, was com-missioned
by the Augustana Heritage Association. The authors, Maria
Erling and Mark Granquist, have provided a comprehensive and
well-written account of the evolution of a fledgling immigrant “synod”
into a church with a national reach, and eventually into a part of a
coming together of Lutherans from many different immigrant back-grounds.
They have also, in an admirable way, provided an account
that honors the “Augustana heritage” by showing how Augustana,
on the basis of its Lutheran roots in Sweden and its increasing inter-action
and cooperation with American fellow Lutherans, served a
steady stream of Swedish immigrants. Augustana helped them form a
bridging Swedish-American community and facilitated their transi-tion
into, and participation in, American society. Like the story of
America itself during this period, the Augustana story is an account
of success and progress as well as of trials, tribulations, and a good
deal of controversy.
The Augustana Story takes the reader from the Swedish begin-nings,
shaped by such well-known Augustana founding fathers as Lars
Paul Esbjörn, Erland Carlsson, Tufve Nilsson Hasselquist, and Eric
Norelius, and by the Awakening that had begun to challenge the
established church in Sweden, through the creation of a separate
Swedish-American Lutheran identity and a sometimes complicated
relationship with the Church of Sweden, to increasing interaction
and eventually closer and closer collaboration with other Lutheran
churches in the United States. The authors show how what began as
a strictly personal relationship among ministers, with a strong empha-sis
on personal piety, evolved into a more and more complex organi-
45
zation, with an administrative hierarchy and the pressure to take
stands, as an organization, on a variety of issues that faced American
society.
The authors flavor their description and analysis of the growth of
Augustana, and of the time of Swedish mass immigration, which was
both its opportunity and its challenge, with portraits of many of its
leaders. Behind the seemingly quiet, pious, and—especially in the
early years—certainly stern surfaces of some of these leaders, they
reveal, through publications and official documents as well as per-sonal
letters, both soaring idealism and grand visions, unselfish devo-tion
to the church and the welfare of its people, enormous energy
and determination and fiery combativeness, personal ambition, fear
of change, a yearning for orthodoxy, bureaucratic wrangling, and
even deviousness. The Augustana Story is an account of how men,
and increasingly women, devoted themselves to a cause that was the
driving force in their lives.
In spite of considerable internal strife, the Swedish-American
Lutheran community did not experience the kind of organizational
splits on doctrinal and behavioral grounds that occurred in other
ethnically based Lutheran communities. But this does not mean that
there were not, as the authors point out, “painful splits in congrega-tions.”
But since “most of the departing groups did not insist on
retaining the Lutheran confessional subscription that Lutherans in-sisted
upon . . . congregational disagreement generated Swedish Meth-odist,
Episcopal, Baptist, and Mission Covenant churches, instead of
rival Lutheran synods.”
It is noteworthy that it has been estimated that only about 15
percent of all Swedish Americans actually belonged to the synod in
the early twentieth century. After all, it certainly appears that
Augustana played a dominant role in the formation of a Swedish
America and, as Dag Blanck has shown in his Becoming Swedish-
American: The Construction of an Ethnic Identity in the Augustana Synod,
1860-1917, in the actual development of a “Swedish American.” It
has been argued, in my opinion justifiably, that Augustana’s sphere of
influence was considerably larger than what the 15 percent figure
may suggest. By comparison, only about 6 percent belonged to the
other Swedish ethnic denominations; if that percentage is divided
46
among the half-dozen other Swedish-American religious entities,
Augustana, of course, looms quite large. And it looms large also vis-à-
vis nonreligious organizations, which, important as the lodges, cul-tural
and historical societies, temperance organizations, Salvation Army
chapters, labor unions, etc., were small by comparison.
To an extent not at all matched by other organizations, Augustana
had a rich outreach, not only through its many congregations spread
across major portions of the nation, but also through its educational
and charitable institutions, its publishing activities, its mission and
youth organizations, and its musical and artistic activities. The au-thors
describe, and document in extensive footnotes, the develop-ment
of such activities within Augustana.
The building of Augustana was aided in major ways by the synod’s
publications, including a remarkable variety of periodicals and ex-tensive
book publishing. As Augustana spread out across the nation,
publications such as Hemlandet, Augustana, and the Lutheran Com-panion
became very important in broad-based communication and
in holding the synod together. The lively, at times quite heated,
internal debate about the directions in which the synod ought to
move reached and engaged the membership through these publica-tions.
Many Augustana publications also served to define and per-petuate
a Swedish heritage among large numbers of Swedish Ameri-cans,
for example, through calendars such as Korsbaneret (The ban-ner
of the Cross).
One of the defining issues that Augustana had to deal with was
that of its Swedish heritage, real or constructed, as opposed to be-coming
more American. The language question, which wracked the
synod, especially during the early years of the twentieth century, was
the most explicit manifestation of this struggle. It set the immigrant
generation and those who wanted to hold onto a narrower ethnic
identity and definition of Lutheranism, against the generations born
in America and those who were more open to collaboration with
other ethnic groups and other Lutherans, and to full participation in
American society.
In its modern manifestation, this issue can perhaps be said to
take the form of a search for, and an assertion of, a unique “Augustana
ethos” and unique “Augustana legacies” within the context of, first,
47
the Lutheran Church in America and, most recently, the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America. The Augustana Heritage Association,
which commissioned this history, was itself, it appears, an outgrowth
of this urge for self-definition. I was party to some of the early discus-sions
of this history project in the association, and I am pleased to
acknowledge that Maria Erling and Mark Granquist have fulfilled
their mission with flying colors. Even if it may be difficult to state
exactly what this “Augustana ethos” is, The Augustana Story does
convey the sense that there existed a bond among the leaders and
the people of Augustana, a bond of mutual friendship and respect,
that helped move the church forward and bridged many potential
ruptures in the body ecclesiastical. The Augustana legacies in the
form of the surviving colleges and a special emphasis on youth work
give some further substance to a unique Augustana heritage.
The relationship to Sweden and the Church of Sweden entailed
a number of complications. For example, when the charismatic Arch-bishop
Nathan Söderblom, who became a world leader in the ecu-menical
movement, visited America, his visit and influence were
strongly resisted by some in the Augustana community. The same
can be said for participation in Augustana events by representatives
of the Church of Sweden in ways that might suggest invoking apos-tolic
succession.
I spent an interesting afternoon with Dr. Conrad Bergendoff a
few years ago, when he must have been in his late nineties. He, of
course, figures prominently in The Augustana Story. When I arrived,
he interrupted his listening to radio coverage of a North Park-
Augustana football game and began reminiscing. Two topics stand
out in my memory from that afternoon, apart from the fact that this
great scholar was actually listening to radio coverage of a college
football game. Maybe the game brought back to him some memories
of the intellectual sparring between Augustana and the Mission Cov-enant?
Anyway, the two topics that most fascinated me were his
working as Archbishop Söderblom’s assistant, as I understood it, around
the time of the Stockholm Conference on Work and Life in 1925,
and the separation of the Augustana Seminary from Augustana Col-lege
in 1948. Dr. Bergendoff’s time in Sweden, working with the
Archbishop, seemed to have been a highly stimulating experience
48
for the young American theologian, including both entering deeply
into the world of scholarship and experiencing ecumenism in a world-wide
perspective. The separation of the seminary and the college, on
the other hand, seemed to have been a bitter experience, the pain of
which had not quite dissipated even after all these years and after a
highly successful life as a scholar, college president, and church leader.
The Augustana Story provides a detailed account of the underlying
controversy between conservatives and progressives in the church.
Controversy was not at all rare in Augustana far beyond the issue
of its ethnic heritage and ecumenism. It was, for example, engen-dered
by some of the outreach activities and organizations and their
roles within the church. There was conflict concerning the academic
standards of the seminary, and its orthodoxy, which pitted liberals in
the church against conservatives. Questions arose about the kind of
college education to be provided by the church’s colleges. There was
conflict concerning whether women should have a vote within the
congregations, and whether they should be allowed to serve as del-egates
to the synod’s conventions. The Women’s Missionary Society
became a challenge to the leadership of the church, as its founder,
the formidable Emmy Evald, daughter of Erland Carlsson, emerged as
a powerful voice within the church. She certainly must have under-mined
any notion of what some regarded as “the ideal pious woman;”
she even testified in the U.S. Congress on the issue of women’s
suffrage. Youth organizations were seen by some as presenting poten-tial
competition with the congregations, and as potential hotbeds for
the kind of worldliness that was fiercely resisted by those who be-lieved
in “code morality,” objecting to all kinds of personal conduct.
But over time these activities and organizations became very success-ful,
and their impact was great; Augustana’s overall impact was in
many ways shaped by them.
It is difficult to think of any major issue facing American society
between 1850 and 1962 that did not raise its head within Augustana:
slavery, the status of women, temperance, capitalism and the labor
movement, militarism and pacifism, communism, and, with special
fury, ecumenism. In many ways, the debate—sometimes ferocious
and quite personal—reflects the points of view and the stands found
in the broader society of the United States. Although Augustana’s
49
leaders seem to have tried to keep such issues from derailing the
activities that they considered central to the life of the church, the
synodical meetings sometimes featured major battles between more
conservative and more liberal factions. The authors have enriched
their presentation with excerpts from, and references to, personal
correspondence, which even more than the official reports captures
the vehemence with which the battles over these very important
issues were fought within Augustana.
The Augustana Story includes a fascinating section—one of a
number of special vignettes spicing the account—on the Swedish-
American artist Birger Sandzén, and on the interest in the arts of his
friend Fritiof Fryxell, the geologist who laid the foundation for the
solid reputation of Augustana College in geology. They are both—as
are many more who appear in the book—laypersons of impressive
intellect and ability who had an impact far beyond the church within
whose institutions they chose to work. It is, of course, also part of the
picture that they ended up in conflict with some of the more conser-vative
elements within Augustana.
With reference to Fryxell, it is worth noting how early—actually
going back to Esbjörn’s teaching of natural science to seminarians in
Springfield in 1857—Augustana schools began teaching geology and
evolution, in contrast to other Lutheran colleges. That the church
did not find any conclusive solution to the issue of evolution, and
science in general, as a challenge to deism and to any notion of the
irrefutability of the Bible, is hardly surprising, given the persistence of
the issue in American society.
As I read the Augustana Story, it struck me that this volume is
not only a solid work of history, but also a corrective and a reminder.
On the one hand, it can serve as a corrective to whatever filiopietistic
tendencies the reader may still find within him- or herself. Our fore-bears
were no saints just marching forward piously in constant peace
and harmony; they were strong-minded, combative, and argumenta-tive
men and women, even as they were driven by idealistic goals.
On the other hand, it can remind the reader that the founding
fathers (and eventually mothers) of Augustana wrestled with many of
the issues we face today and, in spite of much conflict, they found
ways of dealing with them within what remained an intact network of
50
friendship and respect.
We owe Maria Erling and Mark Granquist a debt of gratitude
and appreciation for writing a history of important aspects of our past
and making clear that it is relevant today. That, to me, is a fine way
of honoring the Augustana heritage.
NILS HASSELMO
TUCSON, ARIZONA
Blomqvist, Birgitta, and Jerry Lundgren, Swede Bend, Iowa: 1849 to
1885, The Early Years. Privately published, 2009. Softcover, 153 pp.,
photos, map, chart. Available for $15 plus $5 postage from Swedish
Foundation of Iowa’s Swede Bend Settlement, c/o Swedish Immi-grant
Museum, P.O. Box 132, Stratford, IA 50239.
The Swede Bend settlement was one of the earliest Swedish
settlements in Iowa, dating from 1849. It sprang from the first two
such settlements, New Sweden (1845) and Swede Point (now Madrid)
(1846). In fact, the founders of Swede Bend originally arrived at
Swede Point in central Iowa’s Boone County in October of 1849
after an arduous journey, and then pushed on another thirty or so
miles north to a site where land was more readily available. This
sequence of events was described in my 1998 article in the Quarterly
entitled “America Letters and Iowa’s First Swedish Settlements” (SAHQ
43:3 [October 1998], 169-80).
Swede Bend took its name from a great bend in the Des Moines
River, the same river that flowed south to pass the Swede Point
settlement. Rather than a single location, Swede Bend was always
considered a much broader settlement region of north-central Iowa
that included modern-day Stratford, Dayton, Harcourt, and Gowrie
and was home to many concentrations of Swedish immigrants and
their families, as well as rural areas where Swedish immigrants devel-oped
farms from prairies and wooded bottomlands alike.
The Swede Bend settlement played important roles in the history
of Swedish America, including religious and church history. The
Stratford Evangelical Lutheran Church, for example, was formed by